The October Revolution & The Soviet Union: What went right?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

So, I'm going to lay out some pretty specific terms for this thread, and I know a lot of folk will find them pretty disagreeable. There is a method to my madness: I'm hoping to see some discussion and summarizing of the positive lessons of 1917 in a way that is useful for on-the-ground organizers.

As such, I don't care about "what went right" in the sense of what went right in a grand historical sense, and I hope that we can avoid having another thread devolve in a discussion of whether the Soviet Union was tragedy or a triumph, or at what point it ceased to be one and became the other.
What can we draw from the experiences (of bolsheviks, left-SRs, anarchists, and others alike) that may be useful to us now (knowing that this will be a point of contention)?

I'm hoping folks can point to tactics, and locate those tactics in a strategic context. What means, for example: Lead to workers' control, in workplaces and in a broader geographical sense? What promoted unity between workers and other oppressed strata on a principled basis? What means lead to the spread of anticapitalist consciousness? What was the role of newspapers or other media? What forms of organization (legal and illegal) were used by workers and/or revolutionaries? How did different types of organizations relate in was that were symbiotic?

I'm going to try to keep quiet in this thread except to play moderator.
I hope you'll excuse my Platypus (http://platypus1917.org/) complex. ;)1

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

No posts? Jeeze, way to inspire confidence in the legacy of past struggles, y'all.

Maybe I'll just go to the "What went wrong?" thread and try to answer my question by process of elimination.

[MarxArchist]

Leninin's revolutionary motivations to start. That was right. Pointing to Marx's late writings surrounding justifications for Russia skipping capitalist mode of production- That was right in so far as the early Russian Bolsheviks understood that Russia's further development depended on help from more advanced capitalist nations. Some of the suppression of dissenting ideas was questionable but placed in the context of war/capitalist counter revolution I can see why an almost zero tolerance policy was taken up. I think things started to go very wrong when it became apparent a global revolution wasnt taking place, that Russia didn't 'spark' working class revolution worldwide or even in key regions such as Germany/France.

[vanukar]

Hmm..well, let's see. Multiple famines which caused the deaths of millions, a 30 year regime which enforced its rule through terror and mass state repression, and a lasting precedent for socialism under national banners. Don't look like much to me.

[MarxArchist]

Hmm..well, let's see. Multiple famines which caused the deaths of millions, a 30 year regime which enforced its rule through terror and mass state repression, and a lasting precedent for socialism under national banners. Don't look like much to me.

Wrong thread, I think there's a thread where people can post the sort of viewpoint you just put forth, even so I find your analysis to be lacking. To say the least.

[TheEmancipator]

What went right was the thousands of good revolutionaries that were willing to put a cause greater than their own above everything else.

Sadly, they were betrayed specifically by those who only had their own interests at heart.

Still, I admire your quest for a positive outlook to what is an eventual tragedy.

[subcp]

The Third International as a product of the revolutionary wave initiated by the 1917 revolutions is something that went 'right'. What it became is immaterial; the communists involved have left behind the work for contemporary communists to interpret and apply (where it is necessary), as well as a lot more lessons in the negative (what we don't want to do, what won't work, etc.). We have the accumulated experience and thoughts of generations of socialists, communists, anarchists and syndicalists who were in some way in contact with, members of, supporters of, expelled from, broke with, the Communist International.

That gain is what gives us insight into the biggest and most thorough proletarian revolution attempt in the history of capitalism- by people who were there and those influenced by earlier revolutionary theory and action, passing on the legacies and ways of thinking of a living Marxism.